Conformity
- Created by: Ellie
- Created on: 28-05-13 13:55
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- Conformity
- Change in behaviour or attitude as a result of perceived group pressure
- There are 3 different types of conformity
- Compliance
- The person conforms publicly but continues to disagree privately
- Shallowest form
- The person conforms publicly but continues to disagree privately
- Identification
- Conforms publicly and privately as they have identified with the group and feel a sense of membership
- Change in belief is usually temporary
- Conforms publicly and privately as they have identified with the group and feel a sense of membership
- Internalisation
- The person conforms publicly and privately as they have internalised and accepted the views of the group
- This is the deepest form of conformity
- Kelman 1958
- Compliance
- Asch (1956)
- Asked student volunteers to take part in a vision test
- All but 1 participants were confederates
- Seated in a room and asked to look at 3 lines of different lengths
- Each pp was asked to state in turn which line was the same as the standard length
- The answer was obvious however all confederates were told to say the wrong line to see what the pp would do
- Each pp was asked to state in turn which line was the same as the standard length
- Seated in a room and asked to look at 3 lines of different lengths
- All but 1 participants were confederates
- Aim: How the lone pp would react to the behaviour of the confederates
- 123 male undergraduates were tested
- Always answered in the same order round a table: pp last or second last
- Incorrect answer was given 12 out of 18 trials by confederates
- On the 12 critical trials, 39% of responses from the pp were incorrect, agreeing with the majority.
- Incorrect answer was given 12 out of 18 trials by confederates
- Always answered in the same order round a table: pp last or second last
- Why did people conform?
- After interviewing the pps he found that:
- Distortion of perception-see the lines in the same way
- Distortion of judgement-doubted the accuracy of their judgement
- distortion of action-agreed publicly but not privately. avoid disproval (compliance)
- Distortion of perception-see the lines in the same way
- After interviewing the pps he found that:
- Variations in the Asch study
- Conducted in the 1950's - Mcarthy era where people were scared to be different
- Child of its time
- Decreased validity and generalibilty
- Child of its time
- When the task difficulty increased, so did the conformity
- When self efficiacy was high, conformity was low
- When the size of the majority was decreased, conformity was reduced
- When a confederate gave correct answer, conformity was reduced
- Conducted in the 1950's - Mcarthy era where people were scared to be different
- Evaluation
- Methodological issues
- All men - gender bias
- All American - culture bias
- Lacks validity
- Judging lines isn't important os more likely to conform
- Answering out loud
- Perrin and Spencer
- Conducted an experiment on British students in the 70's and found low conformity
- Ethical issues
- Informed consent
- Deception
- Methodological issues
- Asked student volunteers to take part in a vision test
- Explanations of conformity
- Normative social influence
- We wish to be liked by the majority group, so we go along with them. Fitting in with the 'norm'
- Informational social influence
- We look to the majority group for information as we are unsure about the way in which to behave. We genuinely believe that they are correct so we conform
- Identification with social roles
- We learn expectations of how we should behave in certain situations. We then conform to these expectations when the situation arises.
- Normative social influence
- Smith and Bond
- Meta analysis of 133 studies using Asch's experiment
- Conformity was higher in collectivist cultures
- Impact of cultural variations was greater than any other variable
- Conformity was higher in collectivist cultures
- Conformity was higher in collectivist cultures
- Impact of cultural variations was greater than any other variable
- Meta analysis of 133 studies using Asch's experiment
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